US midterm elections 2026 live updates: Democrats take control of Congress in major setback for Trump

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

In case you fell asleep early, yesterday evening resonated as an extinction level-event for Donald Trump’s Republican Party, a worst-case scenario for the GOP that even the starkest polls might’ve underestimated.

Democrats defended a crucial Senate seat in Michigan and won the likely pickups in Maine and North Carolina. They then proceeded to flip five more seats in states that would normally be considered unquestionably red: Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, and — the biggest prize of them all — Texas.

As of Wednesday morning, Democrats have secured 54 seats in the Senate. A closely-watched race in Alaska is yet to be called. And the Senate contest in ruby red Mississippi is down to the wire, with Democrat Scott Colom leading by just a few dozen votes as the final ballots roll in.

The Democrats have already secured 228 seats in the House, ten more than needed for a majority, and could realistically run up the score to 240 seats or more. They’ve also flipped governor’s offices in Texas, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Nevada.

Republicans, needless to say, are shell-shocked, with the future of the party deeply uncertain, and some sounding the death-knell for a decade of Trump-dominated GOP politics.

Here are some other developments you may have missed last night:

Trump, uncharacteristically gracious, accepted his party’s resounding defeat, congratulated Democrats, and told The New York Times that he was “absolutely willing to accept” the election results. That was very much in doubt after the Trump administration spent months seeking to exert greater influence over the elections process through executive orders and the courts.

Deb Haaland, running in New Mexico, became the first Native American woman elected as governor. Keisha Lanca Bottoms became the first Black woman ever elected governor. Abdul El-Sayed, the victorious Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, became the first Muslim voted into the upper chamber.

Several key congressional races, including contests in Colorado, Michigan, Maine, New York, California, and North Carolina, remain to be called.

Lauren Boebert, the hard-right Colorado congresswoman who has been one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken allies in the House of Representatives, is at risk of losing her seat in a close race with her Democratic challenger.

With more than 80 percent of the vote in, Boebert trails by one-and-a-half percent in the race for Colorado’s 4th District to Eileen Laubacher, a onetime Navy rear admiral and former Republican who switched parties.

Amid a slate of devastating losses for President Trump’s, Boebert’s ouster would nonetheless represent the rebuke of a congresswoman who was emblematic of the kind of lawmaker Trump sought to cultivate: hard-right, provocative, and fiercely loyal to the Trump brand.

The results of a closely-fought California ballot proposal to impose a one-time tax on billionaires remain too close to call as of Wednesday morning, the Associated Press reported.

If it passes, the measure would hit the state’s ultra-wealthy with a one-time 5% tax. It prompted something of an internecine war among California Democrats, winning support from top progressives, but getting blowback from some party leaders including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who fear its passage would force an exodus of the state’s ultra-wealthy.

Those same ultra-wealthy have also spent lavishly to campaign against the proposal.